Take Five remembers to restart the music when you don't

Have you ever suddenly realized that you’re sitting at your desk, working away, but yet something’s missing? At some point, you paused iTunes, and now all you’re hearing is the sound of silence—and I don’t mean Simon and Garfunkel. Thanks to Take Five, a new Mac app from the Iconfactory, you’ll never have to suffer through this terrible ordeal again.

Take Five lives in your menu bar, just waiting for you to pause iTunes. When you click on its pause icon, a timer starts counting down—when the timer hits zero, your music will fade back in. By default, Take Five’s timer starts at five minutes (hence the catchy name), but you can adjust it to other durations, up to 30 minutes. You can also configure hot keys to start and stop the timer, play and pause your music, show and hide Take Five, and even show and hide iTunes.

If you need to alter the timer while it’s already counting down, it’s as simple as clicking on Take Five and dragging the slider either up or down, depending on how long it is before you want to rock out again. You can also just hit Take Five’s play button to instantly resume your music at any time.

For the most part, Take Five stays out of your way, but if you want it can also show you when iTunes moves onto your next track, briefly displaying a floating window with the currently playing track’s name, artist, and album art.

Take Five is available on the Mac App Store and, for a limited time, costs just $2—half of its official $4 price tag. It requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later. And, as a reminder, there’s already an iOS version of Take Five, in case you forget to resume your music while you’re on the go.